Hating on millennial snowflakes and conservative Christian whiners at the same time? SIGN US UP! So here is a story from the 8th-ranked-in-the-nation Duke University, where, IN THEORY, idiots aren’t allowed to study. Every year, Duke picks a book for all the new kiddies to read, as part of the Duke Common Experience Program, which “is designed to give incoming students a shared intellectual experience with other members of their class.” Because “I just finished puberty and I’m really good at beer pong!” is apparently not “intellectual” enough for these snobs, we guess. This year, they chose Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, which Duke describes like so:

Published in 2006, this bestselling graphic book follows Bechdel’s relationship with her father, an English teacher and director of a funeral home, which she and her family call the “Fun Home.” Later, when Alison comes out as lesbian, she discovers her father was also gay, leaving Alison with a “legacy of mystery” to solve.

“’Fun Home’ is a book like no other. The author uses the unique graphic medium to tell a story that sheds a lot of light on important and weighted issues like mental health, interpersonal relationships and human rights, all critical issues that students will become acquainted with in college,” said Ibanca Anand, a student member of the Duke Common Experience selection committee.

Sounds interesting, and it has pictures in it! But unfortunately, some of those pictures are of lesbians lesbianing it up with each other lesbionically, and some of the kids say Jesus and their moms said they’re not allowed to look at dirty stuff like that:

“Obviously, the purpose of Fun Home is literary and not pornographic in nature,” freshman Brian Grasso told the Daily Beast. “However, I still hold that personally, it would be dishonoring to God for me to read it and to view it.”

Jesus cries when you look at pictures of boobies. At least young Brian understands that the mere depiction of a breast does not constitute “pornography.” However, one of his fellow frosh babies seems to be a little John Ashcroft-in-training, and probably should have gone to a fundamentalist safety school like Liberty or Bob Jones:

Freshman Jeffrey Wubbenhorst told the Duke Chronicle in an email that “the nature of Fun Home means that content that I might have consented to read in print now violates my conscience due to its pornographic nature.”

We’ll toss the ball back to Grasso, who needs to reassure everyone that it’s not because of the lesbian stuff, it’s just that he’s scared Jesus will see his boner if he reads it:

“I would not have read the book if the pictures were of heterosexual intercourse,” he said. “I am a Christian, and I do believe what the Bible says about homosexuality but I also know Christians recently and historically have harassed homosexuals, and I believe what the Bible says about harassing people and discrimination.”

Aw, that’s nice.

Now, you might be thinking, “Isn’t college a place where you go to broaden your horizons and get exposed to things that challenge your worldview and way of thinking?” And you would be correct, but don’t tell that to half the liberals on Twitter and most of the fundamentalist Christian community.

Now, yr Wonkette has not read the book OR looked at the pictures, so we thought, well maybe this really IS that naughty! Is it basically just Tumblr porn, but with ACTUAL lesbians? Uh, no. It’s won the MacArthur “Genius” Award, and it’s been turned into an extremely successful Broadway musical. Hey look, here is a song from the show! It’s a really heartwarming thing, about a little girl who is realizing she’s “different,” in the lesbian way, seeing for the first time a woman who seems LIKE HER.

So maybe these bitching kids are the ones who need to read the book the most?

Of course, this isn’t the first time this has happened with this book. College Of Charleston had a mighty row over how this lezzie coming-of-age story was “pornographic,” and the assholes in the South Carolina House actually “voted to defund College of Charleston’s freshmen reading program to the tune of $52,000 because of the Fun Home selection.” Because heaven forfend those kids hear about the existence of breasts or lesbians before their heterosexual wedding nights, as God intended.

Message to millennial college students, whether you’re the liberal kind or the conservative kind: Grow up, you whiny ass titty babies. The world does not exist to cater to your personal feelings.

Evan Hurst is the Senior Editor of Wonkette.
He spends his days deflecting the sad glances of his black lab, Lula, who would please like him to stop typing letters to the internet and throw the squeaky chicken in the backyard instead. Though the internet does not give him credit, it's probably his fault Aaron Schock is no longer a congressperson, due how Evan would not stay off his tail during the SCANDALS. (Not in a sex way, in a writing way!) Also, he writes songs and plays the piano, at the same time! Lastly, Evan is a Southern person, and thus is casting polite judgment on you, right now, for reading this. Bless your heart.

Surprising no one, I own this book. Read it the first time hiding in the stacks working at a college bookstore. It’s a fascinating piece of visual storytelling. And yes, there are boobs. Read it, you little whiners.

Amy!

It’s really, really good. It totally wasn’t what I was expecting, since I’ve also got the full run of Dykes to Watch Out For.

My freshman orientation course book-to-read (in 1978, *sigh*, I are a oldz) was The Left Hand of Darkness. Which also caused several of the whiny titty babies (some of whom prolly ended up being parents of millennials) in the course to weep bitter tears of frustrated rage, because the professor told them “Sure, you can refuse to read it! You’ll get an F for the course,” with this absolutely carnivorous smile.

HELisforHEL

We are oldz together. We had a fundie dope in our figure drawing classes who complained that we were drawing Real Live Naked People With Dirty Bits. In an art school. Sigh. And yeah, she probably had 37 children eventually, like her fellow bible-stupids, doing her bit to dilute the gene pool.

lucidamente

That’s what happens when you don’t stick with the classics, like Ulysses or Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Villago Delenda Est

Or Lysistrata

kindness

Or The Bible. (watch out for the kinky Lott drunkenly having his way with both his daughters after his wife is turned to a pillar of salt by a Just and Loving God)

BackDoorMan

… or Portnoy’s Complaint.

freakishlystrong

Who are these delicate flowers? God WANTS you to at least get a blow job in college, ferfuckssake.

Latverian Diplomat

College blow jobs are what God created frat brothers for.

lesterthegiantape

Yeah, but they all claim they don’t remember doing it

BackDoorMan

… “hey!, it was just that one time eleven years ago… I think…”

BackDoorMan

… and if you can’t get one there… you are beyond redemption.

tihond

Brian Grasso just doesn’t want to follow in Josh Duggar’s footsteps. Sadly, it was a Sears Catalog that led Josh astray.

lesterthegiantape

It all went to hell when they dropped the “Roebuck”

DemmeFatale

Maternity bra libel!

Callyson

Freshman Jeffrey Wubbenhorst told the Duke Chronicle in an email that “the nature of Fun Home means that content that I might have consented to read in print now violates my conscience due to its pornographic nature.”

Words are good…drawings are bad, then? Well, I guess that explains the popularity of those Penthouse Forum letters then…

Great. As if there weren’t enough insufferable trustafarian Dookies in the world already.

Unforgotten

Back in the 90’s, the Kansas Board of Education (or whatever is/was the name of the State Bureau in charge of Education) banned a version of ‘Red Riding Hood’.
It could ‘induce to alcoholism’ the poor kids that read it.
Actually it only had a picture of a bottle of wine among the stuff RRH was taking to her grandma.
That’s the same line of logic this idiot uses… Makes you wonder…

As a former fundamentalism male myself, I will bet one trillion dollars that if we dove into their computers and the browser history of all of these dudes that we would find a plethora of lesbian porn links and pics.

JustPixelz

It’s against their religion/lifestyle to use the Private Browsing option.

Villago Delenda Est

By “a plethora” you mean “ZOMG I need another 4 terabytes for all this stuff!”

Latverian Diplomat

designed to give incoming students a shared intellectual experience with other members of their class

And now that shared experience is staying far away from any Frosh douchebags who “refused” to read this (IMHO wonderful) book. A valuable experience indeed.

WiscoJoe

So is it political correctness run amok that college kids are reading Alison Bechdel? Or is it political correctness run amok that college kids are offended by Alison Bechdel? Is it politically correct to point out how stupid and childish these pearl-clutching undergrads are?

In conclusion, political correctness is bad or something or other. That must be it. Also, feminazis.

marxalot

Points to the people who chose the book. And for everyone else, there’s…

CapnFatback

Had the Duke Common Experience Program only stuck to assigning texts known for gratuitous violence, like, you know, the Bible.

FauxAntocles

If the bibble were illustrated, it would be consigned to the adult section.

By the way, I had received that version of the Picture Bible above from my aunt to celebrate my first Communion. The difference is the cover of my Picture Bible soon was embellished with a puffy R2D2 sticker.

Spotts1701

And yet they go to a school whose mascot is a devil. Go figure.

Querolous

A Blue Devil in a Red State. Go figure.

Amy!

Purple. Purple state, please. We’re trying, really. Prolly screwed until after 2020, given the extraordinarily overt gerrymandering in 2010, but we’re here (I live in a county that’s got a significant population of Oregon-compatible tree-hugging ex-hippy dropouts, and despite its emphatically rural character votes consistently blue), and we’re not leaving, and we’re doing the best we can.

JustPixelz

Ignorance is bliss. Also is Brian Grasso.

Mavenmaven

It is a great student move, seeing it a lot now. They know that from now on, till graduation, they get special status, can’t get poor grades in humanities courses, etc, because now they are akin to whistleblowers.

nightmoth

Seriously? Profs can’t flunk them?

Spotts1701

They can try to flunk them. But if Mumsy and Daddy are well-heeled enough, the administration will cave faster than a wet paper sack. College administrators are not known for their firm stances.

Angry_Cop

They can, but then enjoy spending five years of your life tied up in a court case. Professors don’t make enough to put up with that kind of shit.

Mavenmaven

Depends on the course and the subjective component. They can certainly flunk organic chemistry, but in the humanities they can become too dangerous to grade.

dslindc

There were a few like that when I was in college. Thankfully, they were mostly laughed out of school and the courts to which they took their cases. Sadly, that’s less the way pans out these days.

Oh, please assign that one too: can’t wait to see the meltdown over that book…

coozledad

Or “The Half has Never Been Told.”

MsAnthropesMr

If Jesus cries when people look at naked boobies, Al Gore’s creation keeps him blubbering. Or so I hear.

Joshua Norton

Esssh. I remember back waaaay back when, I was assigned to read a book that I hated and threw away half way through reading it. They flunked my ass. Problem solved. Or are these snowflakes just too delicate to live with the consequences of their actions?

coozledad

My most horrific college reading experience was for “The Bible as History’ class. Written by dumbasses, for dumbasses. The whole damn thing is an insult to the species.

DemmeFatale

Had to stop reading “The Painted Bird” because it was toxic and disturbing.
The prof gave me “Sophie’s Choice” instead.

eddi

One thing the current generation of half-trained smartasses has learned from TV news is that no action has real consequences. And note this delicate blossom is just proving that.

artem1s

give ’em a choice. that or The Tropic of Cancer. yea, thought so.

beatbort

As a graduate of the University of North Carolina, 8 miles down Tobacco Road from Duke, all I can do is point and laugh.
Maybe these little whiners can do Bible study with Coach K, the spawn of Satan, instead.

As you said, Liberty and Bob Jones are both right down the road—get thee hence, little snowflake, and let their frigidity preserve your specialness.
Duke has a waiting list–start calling, admissions department.

elviouslyqueer

Dear fundy freshpersons: You chose Duke, for crying out loud. If you wanted to stay in a Christ-y bubble for the duration of your college career, you should’ve gone to Liberty or Oral Roberts, you morons.

coozledad

And they’re not that far from Mt. Olive or Campbell, or Lees McCrae, where they can be with their own kind.

noodle

or Gonzaga. Yikes.

sudden_eyes

Or Patrick Henry. An (insane) friend of mine actually sent her brilliant daughter there.

Vegan and Tiara

…or Bob Jones University. Good ole BJU (let that sink in for a minute).

LIT_Fag

No, this is better…they’ll be turned by the end of the first semester, sucking dick in the downstairs bathroom in the Union, far stall, thus creating lifetime libruls.

MsAnthropesMr

I sympathize with this student. I feel that Ethan Frome also falls into the abomination unto the Lord.

beatbort

In my freshman class at Carolina, we were forced to read something called “An Angry Man Speaks Up to Youth.” It was not erotic. Count your blessings, little Dukies.

We read Blood Done Sign My Name. I didn’t hear any bitching. But Carolina is extremely NOT DOOK so…

elviouslyqueer

I’ll see your Ethan Frome and raise you George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss. Which I’m still convinced was a plot by our professor to get over half the class to drop.

Joshua Norton

Silas Marner. It’s ALWAYS Silas Marner.

elviouslyqueer

Splitters!

marxalot

I tried to read that once. I got through Middlemarch, I fought my way through Emma and Wuthering Heights, by glob, but that one did me in.

elviouslyqueer

19th Century Brit Lit isn’t for sissies. AT ALL.

marxalot

And me, a veteran of the Milton Single Author Course! We all have our Waterloo, I suppose.

elviouslyqueer

Oh dear lord, you poor thing. Did you have to do the whole Paradise Lost/Regained thing and Aeropagetica?

marxalot

Sure did. And Samson Agonistes.

OneYieldRegular

No wonder you’re a lot of Marxist!

marxalot

Funny story: on dare, I wrote my final paper constructing Milton’s work within a proto-Maoist framework, called it “Silver From the Furnace: Milton and the Perpetual Revolution.”

Amy!

Brilliant!

elviouslyqueer

One of my favorite grad school profs was (still is) a Very. Noted. Milton scholar. Loved her to death, but I wasn’t about to take any Milton classes with her.

marxalot

I had the great fortune of taking this course from a Very Noted Milton Scholar myself. She had articles in all the critical compendia we read, and assigned us none of her own work. That’s class.

elviouslyqueer

Mine too! She was very prolific but also very modest about her accomplishments. Which were legion.

sudden_eyes

Ah. My Spenser prof assigned his own edition of The Faerie Queen AND asked us to watch out for typos in the endnotes so he could send in corrections for the next printing. I found quite a few; it didn’t help my grade.

Joshua Norton

Eliot has a way of creating ponderous tomes that just ramble on and on and on. I guess it was the Victorian way of attempting to write romance novels in those pre “Valley of the Dolls” days.

elviouslyqueer

Middlemarch was at least like a soap opera. Or Downton Abbey, albeit with uglier characters.

malilo

Good lord, Eliot was *not* writing romance novels. This is the most offensive non-comment I have ever read at Wonket!

Joshua Norton

I dunno, there seemed to be a lot of subplots about love, unrequited and otherwise, floating around most of her books.

lesterthegiantape

The Scarlet Letter, oy.

Takoma DC

Tom Jones

coozledad

I just hope they go to the northern end of the county to slop with their soul mates instead of eating downtown. I hate when I drive all the way into Durham and some fratty Jeebus shite is harshing the restaurant experience.

Catstro

God I live just north of downtown I started whining weeks ago. We bought our house 11 years ago (to the day!) and miss the days when undergrads were terrified to leave campus.

Just avoid everything downtown on Thursdays always.

lesterthegiantape

The greatest challenges in the entire history of mankind lie ahead of this young generation we call “the Millennials”. Unfortunately, my generation, which we call “the parents of the Millennials”, has completely fucked up preparing these young people for the chaos of the future. Why? Maybe because we KNOW it’s going to suck, and we want them to have nice happy fun time® for as long as possible before they have to literally dig the planet out from under a 100-foot layer of molten plastic, old cell phones, nuclear waste, and hair plugs.
It seems to me like exposing the young uns to a little dyke lit is the very, very least taxing challenge they’ll ever have to face.

I’d rant on, but what’s the point? This site doesn’t even allow comments.

Villago Delenda Est

literally dig the planet out from under a 100-foot layer of molten plastic, old cell phones, nuclear waste, and hair plugs.

GOP frontrunner and also rans, too, libelz!

lesterthegiantape

it is to mirth audibly

exinkwretch

How can these kids consider themselves educated if they don’t know a lick about lesbians? (I’ll show myself out.)

lesterthegiantape

I SEE WHAT YOU DO THERE

Spotts1701

Hey, no fingering here!

lesterthegiantape

ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US

Sorry, I ran out of really old memes.

aureolaborealis

ALL YOUR BAEs ARE BELONG TO US.

ftfy

Me not sure

My daughter graduated from the College of Charleston. She complained that there was never any thing that they had to read that was as good as this sounds. Where did I go right?

SuspectedDemocrat

This is serious. Do you know what would happen if young women started learning about lesbians in college?

coozledad

More guys would go into film school?

Villago Delenda Est

More excitement in threesomes in the dorms?

Angry_Cop

Yet more Daddy’s Money Lesbians than we already have?

Ryan Denniston

My have times changed. When I came here (I work at Duke now) as a freshman, we had a screening of Deep Throat as a house event my freshman year. Of course, the residential advisor was fired by April, probably for helping us all get a tanked a few too many times.

BJW

Shoot, when I was at the Univ of Cincinnati they showed Last Tango in Paris. My date and I didn’t make it to the end, as we were mostly bored. (Except for that one scene which was upsetting.)

dslindc

Maybe some sort of home-colleging is in order for these precious creatures. If mommy said no reading about lesbians or looking at boobies, let mommy teach them. Good luck getting a job in the future!

ArgieBargie

“the nature of Fun Home means that content that I might have consented to read in print now violates my conscience due to its pornographic nature.”

“Now watch this BWM drive,” added as he sped off to his family home in The Hamptons.

AngryBlakGuy

…I always thought the entire point of college was being able to look at hardcore porn without having to worry about your parents walking in on you?!?!?

Villago Delenda Est

Or better yet, participate in it!

proudgrampa

Kittens. Would they be willing to look at kittens? Naked, seductive kittens?

Considering the incredibly high competition and thresholds for admittance to these top schools, how do people with such limited life experiences get selected over others who are likely seeking to expand their knowledge and experience and not just reinforce the ideas they bring with them, and shield themselves from anything contrary to those beliefs?

MsAnthropesMr

$
and
$

Villago Delenda Est

It’s called legacy admissions…affirmative action for assholes.

sudden_eyes

Not just Duke. A few years ago the Princeton alumni magazine published the % of incoming freshmen who “didn’t believe in evolution.” Can’t remember the number but it was startlingly high. I was not the only grad who thought: How the fuck did they get in?

Relativicus

Exactly. Don’t believe in evolution if you want to be a jackass, but don’t think about going to a reputable school, either.

Angry_Cop

Colleges love, based on no reason I can see, homeschooled kids. For every one I’ve met that was actually well-educated, I’ve met twenty that were dumber than a pile of dogshit.

I suspect they like them because they have money and tend to not cause trouble, but that “not causing trouble” thing has obviously come to an end, seeing as they’ve “discovered” that invoking Jesus is a get-out-of-anything-free card. Which they are wrong about. But they’ll have no qualms suing over it.

Takoma DC

It’s called money.

Reddishrabbit

I think colleges like the idea of having a diverse body so that people can be exposed to many different thoughts and grow as human beings.
Doesn’t always work (ala Cotton et Cruz)
But sometimes it does, my father was a right winger before he got to Berkley in the 60’s, he is not anymore.

goonemeritus

Nobody ever told me I could have gotten out of reading assignment
just by whining. Man to think of all the Flannery O’Connor this poor Northern
boy had to trudge through.

MsAnthropesMr

I vote that these kids read Elmer Gantry.

OneYieldRegular

Or Don Quixote – that early scene where the village priest throws Quixote’s chivalry books on a bonfire because of their evil influence.

coozledad

Rubs leather elbow patches “I understand some of you shitbirds ain’t gonna read Dyke lit. Typically, I’d just make you drop and give me fifty, but instead, you’re going to read this little number. The Eye by Georges Bataille. That ought to cheer you the fuck up. We’ll cover it in the midterms.”

Hardly Ideal

Never heard of that one… *Google*

*read*

Hey, do any of you deviants have a tentacle or six to spare? Not for porn, though, not this time. I just really need a hug now.

Angry_Cop

Don’t read it, fail out of Duke. It’s called “consequences”. Maybe these little snowflakes can go to Regenery or whatever the fuck that unaccredited law school for Jesus Nazis is called.

Can’t wait for one of these little shitbags to pull this “First Amendment Rights” bullshit at my workplace so I can fire them on the spot.

Villago Delenda Est

These asshole “Christians” make me stabby, shooty, and sock ’em with votes surly.

Stein Olsen

I am starting a new graphic book for Christian schools. See no porn at all.

Hardly Ideal

If you look at something that adorable and see an abomination worthy of eternal fire, you are dead inside.

Stein Olsen

That’s the thing isn’t it… Adorable, cute, innocent, playful. joy… all those can in the religious mind be over written by that fat ugly word called sin. Sin sucks the very essence of life out of them. So no wonder they are dead inside.

Unforgotten

Hey, a little girl/boy (less than 4 years old) wets her/his bed.
The fundie couple who adopted her/him (or who are her/his natural parents) are sure that this is a proof of ‘Satanic possession’ and performs ‘exorcisms’ on her/him…
How many times have I heard that story?

More than I would like to admit…
‘Sin’ is the best excuse ever to be a zombie’s ass!

Bill Slider

God forbid that you should learn about reality stuff when you are in college. That’s why God invented nursing homes.

I wish, I wish, I wish I could assign them excerpts from the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom instead. It’s got no pictures, it’s really old making it Real Literature, and the word “lesbian” is never used! There is a goat licking a man’s balls while he fucks the goat’s nostrils, but I think that’s more Biblical than lesbianism.

elviouslyqueer

Hell, just assign them an Anais Nin “novel.” Or several.

r m reddicks

Henry Millers “Opus Pistorum” , the Tropics and the Rosy Cucifixion. They’ll never read the rest. They’ll go hide. Then become small state politicians. Or attempt to crawl back into their mother’s wombs and become miraculous and tax-exempt.

Unforgotten

‘Justine’, also by Sade (it has a comic book version by Guido Crepax), comes to mind…

Unforgotten

In fact, any comic book made by Crepax would send their heads exploding faster than…
I don’t know, anything?

r m reddicks

Thanks for the reminder of M. Crepax.

Unforgotten

To be honest, I only learned about his work AFTER I saw that (Italian?) TV series about ‘Valentina’…

Relativicus

Some of these dopes will follow the med school-surgeon-wing nut politician track, but most will go College Republican-amateur ratfucker-lobbyist/activist route.

Keep this in mind when you wonder how someone like Ben Carlson is able to qualify for medical school.

Tendernob

These kids should stick to reading something bland and inoffensive, like the family-friendly Bibble!!

I recommend the passage where Lot offers up his two virgin daughters to be gang-raped (Genesis 19:1-11) and those daughters later got their father drunk so they could have sex with him and get pregnant (Genesis 19:30–38).
Or the one where a bear mauls 42 children to death for teasing a prophet with a bald head (2 Kings 2:23-24).
Or the one where a concubine is gang-raped and then dismembered by her master as punishment (Judges 19:22-29),
Or the one where Jephthah burns his daughter alive as a sacrificial offering for God’s favor in killing the Ammonites (Judges 11:30-39).
Or the one where God killed a man for spilling his seed on the ground, because he didn’t want to impregnate his brother’s widow (Genesis 38:9-10).
Or the one where God threatened to punish the Israelites by making them eat their own children(Leviticus 26:27-29 and Jeremiah 19:9).

proudgrampa

God. He seems nice.

Thaumaturgist

God is nice in a 110% Murican way.

Lazy Media

Apparently, no college kid must ever see/hear/read ANYTHING that surprises them or goes against their preconceived notions. If this happens, it’s pretty much the same thing as being shot in the face with a crossbow.

Spotts1701

Not only that, but they still expect to get an A for the course despite insulting the professor and deriding the curriculum. And if they don’t, it’s because that “liberal commie” prof is “oppressing” them.

Duke, out of the goodness of its heart and recognizing the reading limitations of some student athaletes, assigns them an adult comic book with pictures of naked chicks making out. And this makes them martyrs?

Try reading Le rouge et le noir four times in French and then tell me how oppressed you are.

r m reddicks

Off to Pasolini with them. “Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma” ought to sort them out. Since I doubt they can read without pictures. We’ll demand a critique of Marat/Sade at the end of the first semester.

Amy!

“Professor? Will there be labs, with practical application?”

r m reddicks

Perhaps.

OneYieldRegular

Sheesh, go do your “studies” in a madrassa. Sensitive crybabies, this is not the way to get invited to decent parties – or to get hired after graduation, for that matter.

Now, yr Wonkette has not read the book OR looked at the pictures, so we thought, well maybe this really IS that naughty!

Please do treat yourself by buying a copy at Amazon. It’s a beautiful book.

And a slightly pedantic correction: “Fun Home” didn’t win a MacArthur, Ms. Bechdel did. Apparently they call you up out the blue and say, “Congratulations XXX, you’re a genius! Here’s $650K to spend as you like! W00t!” and that’s that.

sudden_eyes

I agree – it’s a fantastic book that Our Wonkette will love. Which reminds me that I need to go pick up a copy of Are You My Mother.

Mehmeisterjr

And yet when I get a call out of the blue it’s somebody who wants to give me a free home security system. Life isn’t fair.

PirateCafe

Story of our lives, apparently! :)

Catstro

Would you be interested in a weekend subscription to the New York Times?

Takoma DC

No thank you sir. That’s the newspaper of record from sodomite city my mumsy warned me ’bout.

Vienna Woods

I keep being told my Windows registry is broken. Then I use very bad language and hang up.

junior friggster

That’s why I never leave the house. I’m waiting for their call.

Rick Hill

What they should really do is have everyone read the same fables, day after day after day. I think Bob Dylan said it more succinctly “This must be what salvation is like after awhile…”

Takoma DC

His name is ‘Wubbenhorst’. Whattya’ expect?

Mehmeisterjr

He’s probably heard a lot of “wubben your horst” jokes.

Barley_Brains

Be vewy, vewy quiet…I’m wubbed my horst.

r m reddicks

Jewus Chwist. You wascally wabbits ah to quick on the dwah.

Takoma DC

And it makes him cwy. :-(

coozledad

How will He wubb it on his own?
This school is awfully big, it’s hard to wubb on your Horst alone
But it’s time you started wubbin’
Or It’s time you let someone else wubb your nubbin

Wubbin’s all around, no need to waste it
You can even have your hallmate taste it
You’re gonna wubb it to the bone.
You’re gonna wubb it to the bone!

Are these precious, Jesus-approved snowflakes going to risk maybe SITTING BESIDE a ghey in class? I hope someone got Mommy and Daddy to make the professors sort the wheat from the chaff.
(Whiny babies- you’re the chaff in this metaphor).

PirateCafe

“Grow up, you whiny ass titty babies. The world does not exist to cater to your personal feelings.”

Truer words were never spoken.

eddi

The whole article can be compressed into that sentence if you’re in a hurry.

PirateCafe

It was what I was thinking when I first heard about the issue (before reading the article).

baconzgood

Baconz is sooooo happy that I never read any thing in college that differed from my opinion, sparked debate, or showed me something “else” from what I thought in high school. Thank GOD! I wasn’t exposed to Gunther Grass and his Hyper-reality, or James Joyces’ stream of consciences, or how Faulkner showed the deep seated racism of the Mississippi from both perspectives.

Or how about history? What would happen if they taught Baconz that the Soviets really took the brunt of casualties in WW II? or that the fourth Crusades were a lot about political and economic interests?

Whew! Baconz dodged a bullet just taking business and bowling at CMU! if’in they would have taught me other smart makin’ stuffs I might have thought for myself and found out:

There are more things in heaven and earth, (Baconz),
Than are dreamt of in (my porky) philosophy.

JoeChristmas

Make sure this fuckwad doesn’t have Internet access…or a library for that matter.

eddi

Cleaning brains off the ceiling when they first encounter a real negative opinion of their protected lives is a regular janitorial chore

House0fTheBlueLights

This fuckwad has a Grindr account, a Tumblr account, and a Pornhub log in, you know he does.

Squirrels05

At least it wasn’t something by Ayn Rand; that shit is capitalist porn catnip for the precious snowflake crowd.

SuspectedDemocrat

Why do I get the feeling these same people wouldn’t be complaining about Ayn’s rape fantasies?

Squirrels05

John Galt: entrepreneur. Serial rapist.

Doug Langley

Actually, Galt only has sex once in the entire book. He’s a virgin when he does it with the heroine, a lass with years and years of sexual experience. Yet he still has her screaming with ecstasy and sobbing that he’s the greatest ever. How’s that for fantasy?

Unforgotten

Hey man, haven’t you realized that Galt is the post-modern day Jeebus?
He CAN make miracles!

SK

Because they place Bill Cosby in the role of that invited rapist. Duh!

TheBidenator

Because a woman’s body has a way of shutting that whole thing down?

Villago Delenda Est

The last thing you want to do is risk some sort of meltdown by making The Wealth of Nations required reading.

Randy Riddle

” … lesbionically …”

“We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was….”

Blank Ron

‘Him’?

SK

“My Pet Goat” available in audio-books narrated by Bush, brother of Jeb! and son of Bush would be a worthy replacement.

Takoma DC

Is that de Sade’s goat?

r m reddicks

Schroedinger’s.

Squirrels05

Some of these Christian snowflakes are unaware that
The Bible is rife with cats risking their souls with temptation and being forgiven by Jesus. Happens all the time.

Rick Hill

Hell, every other day a christian leader succumbs to temptation but, never fear, gawd has already forgiven them.

say wha

And to further the shared intellectual experience, all Duke Freshman will be required to wear this…

Gorillionaire

I can tell you first hand – Duke University is what an online for profit university would look like if they could call themselves “Ivy League”. And the hospital is a bunch of smoke and mirrors too.

James McCarty Yeager

and if it warn’t for referee bias, the basketball team wouldn’t be no great shakes neither

Belasaurius

I’ve been teaching college for 15 years and have fortunately never run across a student like this. Oh sure, the Mormons complain when I reveal the secrets about their dipshit founder, but other than that. I was trying to make a point here, um, oh maybe cause I’m so close to Austin, this type of religious whinybaby….fuck what point was I making….OK, move on and come back to me

Vienna Woods

I once had the son of a fundie minister ostentatiously pick up a book and start reading when I dared to say that the European colonizers destroyed traditional African religion with the introduction of Christianity, and that it was a bad thing.
Sad thing is, he is now a teacher himself.

The one I had to read was called “The Bible: The Bible — A Biblical Record, Containing The Bible” and what’s weird was inside it was one of those board books where you stick your finger through the hole on one side and it makes part of the picture on the other. My favorites were the Adam & Eve picture (the finger was the SNAKE you gross guys), Lot’s Wife (you had to roll your finger in salt first for the full effect), and the elephant’s trunk in the Ark scene. The Crucifixion picture was the worst because you stuck your finger through and there was a crown of thorns on the other side. The school nurse had to cut it off me. It was worse for my roommate. He stuck his penis through it.

*NOTE: I apologize for the above comment. My asthma kicked in recently and I haven’t been smoking any dope, so I’m in kind of a weird place right now.

Villago Delenda Est

It’s all those darn wildfires out west. They’re smogging up everything, and even in Vale there’s a air quality warning out.

r m reddicks

Wouldn’t if have worried the all’s of you folks that the perfessin’ folks couldn’t spell good? Bibble! for God’s sake! There might be a civil/legal remedy if you’re owing some money, still.

Bear OmNomNom

The Bible as Business Ethics… I like it! I’ll still have to ask one of the law profs if unleashing a plague of frogs on your rivals constitutes unfair competition, though.

SnarkTank

Wonder how many of these morans think the “Freshman Daughter Drop-Off” signs at Old Dominion are the funniest things they’ve ever seen?

eddi

AOT,K

BJW

I had to read Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness” in Freshman English. It was scifi that challenged gender assumptions. LOVED it. Also opened my mind some from my middle-class upbringing. (Although I always wanted to KNOW stuff.) I imagine some of these special snowflakes would either miss the important points, OR would cry that they were being forced to accept LGBTQ ideas against their “Christian” ideas.

House0fTheBlueLights

That is an amazing book.

Blank Ron

The reminder’s appreciated. I found my hardcover copy the other day, and it’s past time I re-read it.

My first week in college was pretty stressful. I can’t imagine what it must be like for those who are only being let out of the cage in their parents’ basement for the first time ever.

smr06va

Home schooling = preparing your children for……………………home…………….

HavaBrain

So, let’s say they get through 4 years pure and never reading about lesbians. And they get a job. A great well-paying job like they worked so hard for. And then – they find out their boss is a lesbian. And a married one.

I suppose they must quit rather than condone a sin. Or sue claiming a lesbian boss violates their strongly held religious belief. Or explain to the lesbian why she is going to hell and offer to pray with her.

Sounds like a great debate question to me…

Unforgotten

In fiction it’d be a great comedy sketch or a pungent drama story (for fundies that is).
In real life? The guy would get a Go Fund Me page to pay for his legal expenses…

junior friggster

Please use a “TRIGGER WARNING” for these “posts” which use the word “P*RNOGRAPHIC.”

TIA

Hardly Ideal

And who wants to be that the crybabies in this story would also rail about how Trigger Warnings are ruining America?

HolidayinCambodia

See, this is why my daughter is at Smith. They wrote this book, or might as well have.

lesterthegiantape

LUG = Lesbian Until Graduation

bozilingus

When scissoring, do they use the safety round tips?

lesterthegiantape

I don’t know. They discovered I wasn’t actually a woman within five hours of my arrival at the dorms, so I wasn’t able to complete my education there.

Takoma DC

As long as they don’t run whilst scissoring all will be well.

Cleo_Cat

I suggest THE HANDMAID’S TALE by Margaret Atwood for the kind of society their parents and religious leaders aspire to. No pix, no lesbian sex, just some violence, which I am sure is okay.

lesterthegiantape

I tried to cheat by watching the movie, but it was “The Handjob’s Tail”, which was a pretty loose adaptation. So to speak.

Jerry Noneofyourbizz

I found it gripping!

lesterthegiantape

Two thumbs up it!

Jerry Noneofyourbizz

And one index finger!!!

John Norris

Parts of the movie were filmed at … wait for it … Duke University!

AlanInSF

Kids have it easy these days. When I was in college, I had to watch “Greaser’s Palace.”

Jerry Noneofyourbizz

That’s nothing. I know this one book where this guy offers up his two underage daughters to be ganged raped. Later, through some sort of witchcraft, his wife is turned into a saltlick and then he has sex with and impregnates those same two daughters! Ewwww, gross!

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Evan! Your closing sentences say it all. One mother I know slept on her daughter’s dorm room floor to make sure her Precious wouldn’t need her that first night out of town.
Precious was excelling at beer pong a few weeks later. Seems she’d had a LOT of practice.

Message to millennial college students, whether you’re the liberal kind or the conservative kind: Grow up, you whiny ass titty babies. The world does not exist to cater to your personal feelings.

Dead solid perfect. You are in the (my) pantheon of aphoristic writers and would be if you never wrote another word.

r m reddicks

My old friend Richard S. will be glad to know that the “fun” house meme has endured. His graffito transformed the local “funereal” home into a a veritable fun house before the word “meme” was ever a drip off Richard D’s lips. Hmmm. Do I see a pattern within the world thingy or is it just the booze?

Beowoof14

Thinking about something different than your own opinions. Americans once again lead the way in being self righteous assholes. I can see the Know-Nothing Party making a big comeback.

just_jim

Where have you been the last 30 years? The Know-Nothing Party has made a big comeback, but now they call themselves Republicans.

House0fTheBlueLights

I seriously do not understand a philosophy where even being informed that something exists violates your principles.

AnOuthouse

Good News (Gospel) Brian Grasso! Obamacare covers ass stick removal.

Takoma DC

F. Scott could have done wonders with these young folks. ‘Tender is the Right’ OR ‘Bible Shtupping Christians: Their Tears & Fears of Lezzie Finger Banging Secret Cults & How to Protect Your Children’.

Ilgattomorte

Dear Professor Mantooth,

As I’m sure you know by now, I’m a devout Christian and I’m afraid that once again I must take exception to your reading list. When I signed up for “Literature through Time, from Classics to Pop Culture”. I had no idea I would be putting my mortal soul in jeopardy. Once again you have failed to take Jesus into account while developing your syllabus.

Firstly, I cannot in good conscience read Macbeth. The references to witchcraft and demon fantasy would endanger my faith and I’m sure Jesus would not approve. I thought I had made this clear last semester when you required “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. I distinctly remember complaining about the witchcraft, IN ADDITION to, the bestiality.

“A Separate Peace” is completely unacceptable. What were you thinking? It’s not just the homosexuality, but it contains “the word” and you know which word I’m talking about. While we are on the subject, I thought we had come to terms on anything by Toni Morrison. I am absolutely shocked by your choice of “Song of Solomon”. Not only are there multiple references to “that word”, but sweet Jesus protect me, there are naked black people having all manner of fornication and grown men suckling on negro breasts. Are you out of your mind?

I would, however, commend you on your pop culture choice of “50 Shades of Grey”. While this book does cover adult themes that would normally be forbidden, I, like most Christians, do love a good beating. It’s a part of our tradition.

Sincerely,
Drew Phucoffendi

Unforgotten

Weird… Why did Henry Miller’s The Rosy Crucifixion Trilogy popped up in my mind as I read your post?

r m reddicks

Felt more tropical to me. But I see your point.

Unforgotten

Tropic of Capricorn?
Honestly I haven’t read it, yet.

Ilgattomorte

Maybe because, if I remember the quote correctly, someone referred them as “a shower of lavatory filth”, which, of course, makes them my kind of reading. Damn, I wish I thought of that when I wrote it.

James McCarty Yeager

“pictures … of lesbians lesbianing it up with each other lesbionically”. you publish this whole article and you don’t have a single one of those images (or 5, or 7) on display? what, has the birth of the wonkobaby caused a sudden squeamishness in the world’s best mommyblog-with-dick-jokes? moar pitchers, i tells ye!

True story: My cousin was (now retired) an English Lit professor at a southern university, teaching a freshman core curriculum class. Just about every year, there would be a student or two who would object – on religious belief grounds – to reading Canterbury Tales (for fuck’s sake). Her response was the same every time: Fine, don’t read it. If you can’t comment on the material when you get asked on an exam, you will most likely flunk the course.

Lord-Nash

These are people who couldn’t get through ‘The Millers Tale’. And *NOT* because they didn’t understand Old English.

Mr. Spiffy

Middle English. Old English is Beowulf.

Lord-Nash

My bad.

RoyalUglyDude

Duke sucks.

Wesley2006

The problem with these lil’ Christian f**ks is that they live in a
constant state of fear. Fear of blacks, fear of gays, fear of liberals,
fear of women, fear that their Big Angry Dad Of A God will whip their
sinful behinds if they step out of line one iota. This creates ignorant
self-entitled bullies who play the victim card relentlessly.

My view? Give them something real to be afraid of. You.

If you teach them & they don’t want to do the work, flunk them. If you
employ them and they whine about ‘my religious rights under the
constitution’, fire them. If they promote idiots like Ted Cruz, make
sure you get out and vote against that. Don’t take any sh*t off a bully.
Stand up to them & they’ll back down every time. Cowards always do.

hvdv

Cartoon boobies make the baby Jesus cry.

Blank Ron

While real ones prolly just make him hungry.

Toomush_Infer

Suffer the little children to come unto me…..(make of that what you will)…

Cheesus Crust

Well, if it was about Josh Duggar and his “tryst” with his younger sisters, maybe it would be okay with these people. Fun Home with The Duggars. ** as long as it’s all about how babee Jeebus forgives all the child molesters, serial cheaters and all around douchebags **

House0fTheBlueLights

Listen carefully, children: knowing about a thing does not mean you must approve of it. (For instance, I disapprove of you.) Now, please do not ever get a job that requires any kind of critical thinking which might affect other human beings.

House0fTheBlueLights

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST I HATE THESE FUCKING ASSHOLES.

House0fTheBlueLights

Ok. Better now. (not really)

jviscont1

these kids do realize the school mascot features the devil in blue dress?

That article hits the nail on the head. Young, left wing kids are starting to have a lot in common with old conservatives. I hope to God they never team up together or the rest of us are sunk.

Whollyholeyholy

As I recall there is no real point in going to a lit class if you can’t have a throwdown about who is right and who is wrong. If controversy is off the table, what are they even doing there? Sounds boring as hell.

Whollyholeyholy

In hindsight, I’d have been spared the useless English degree if it had been less fun to go to those expensive book club meetings.

How did humanity manage to survive all these years without trigger warnings. I have sympathy for people who’ve experienced traumatic events, but trying to avoid your problems doesn’t make them go away.

Whollyholeyholy

And if the trigger warning is needed because someone is going to say Asians are good at school, I don’t even know what to do with that. I understand stereotyping is not desirable, but this is not on the PTSD level…is it?????

Ulricii

If they team up with the anti-vax crowd, the rest of us are even worse off. We’re dead.

Ants In My Eyes Johnson

Trigger warnings were supposed to be so that people could choose whether they wanted to read on, not so that they could avoid it altogether every time. It’s like a spoiler alert, but for people who’ve had some kind of trauma.

Incoming Ham

Why wasn’t this around when I was in school? Algebra is against my closely held religious beliefs.

kaw143

Actually, now that I think of it, going to school is against my sincerely held religious beliefs. So, I’ll be needing that Constitutionally guaranteed Ph.D., please. (What I drag I had to earn the degrees I have the old way, like a fucking chump.)

rachelmap

Well, it’s Muslim math, Q.E.D.

Fly

Why is this a story about lesbians when everyone knows Duke sucks.

SisterArtemis

Good Gawd.
This reminds me of the time I was a freshly scrubbed freshman college student and had Rita Mae Brown’s “Rubyfruit Jungle” as an assigned reading. Suffice it to say the book has some pretty “raw” moments in it.
Know what else I remember? not one person got the heebie-jeebies from reading about the lesbo stuff, or the erotic and sociological aspects of hurling grapefruit (read the book), even the nice Christian kids who thought it was weird but interesting, and certainly grist for their intellectual mills. As did we all, as did we all…. Mind you, this was nearly 40 years ago, guess things have changed a wee bit.
Grow up, sheeple!

“Belle Knox” would have been a sophomore if she hadn’t dropped out after freshman year. So no, and no.

spud8meister

Were trigger warnings issued to the heterosexual cis community before the book was read?

Was this lesbian micro aggression?

In the modern university everyone should be offended by something every day.

bargal20

Time for a new Bechdel Test. If your freshman class doesn’t contain at least two conservatives who can have an intelligent conversation about lesbians, your college fails and you get an easy A.

Froggage

Millenials just make me think of the time Uncle Junior called Tony Soprano a “delicate flower.” They grew up texting instead of talking, so they’re poorly socialized; half of them had their parents doing their homework so that they could get in to good schools and threatening to call in lawyers anytime they were in danger of getting punished for something they did wrong, so they are morally and ethically compromised, and they are shockingly ignorant about history and politics. Also, too, narcissism and thin skin. It’s like an entire American generation that’s a recipe for disaster.

Pugsandcoffee

PLEASE won’t someone think of the children, who have read all the rape and incest and murder in the Bible? Those poor children! Think of their SOULS.

mtn_philosoph

Every year, Duke picks a book for all the new kiddies to read, as part of the Duke Common Experience Program, which “is designed to give incoming students a shared intellectual experience with other members of their class.”

Huh… My college freshman class had Electric Ladyland, Wheels of Fire, Live/Dead and Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers as the basis for our “shared intellectual experience.” But the school didn’t pick those out, we did.

SadDemInTex

Evan, thanks for writing EXACTLY what I’ve been thinking about both the “liberal” and the Jebus lovers in college. I am so glad I went to college when I could read porno…I mean literature… even if I didn’t understand it fully. Jebus, I was a minor my entire first year and into the second and no one stopped me from learning anything. My profs were all Commies and I loved them.

mary

I was forced to read Beowulf in college. My professor did not give one single fuck that I thought it was horrible and boring.